PHOTOGRAPHY Kostas Balafas Biographical Note Kostas Balafas was born in 1920 of peasant parents, in the mountain village of Kypseli, in the prefecture of Arta, Epirus. We first encounter him as a photographer in Ioannina, where he lived the experience of struggle of the insurgents against the occupying forces and recorded it in an album of photographs published under the title To Andartiko stin Epiro (“The Rebel Army in Epirus”).From 1951 on he worked as an employee for the Greek Public Electricity Company, devoting most of his spare time to photography. The harsh living conditions of his childhood years and the struggles of the Greek people for independence and a dignified existence, marked him deeply and helped form his photographic style, most movingly and eloquently expressed in his portrayals of the toil and sorrows of the poor and humble, his favorite subjects. His journeys from time to time on foot, covering almost the whole of Greece, are rendered in his own special way in his photographic recordings.